Empathy Is Just Another Way Of Saying
by xmiracle-milex
Summary: Empathy Is Just Another Way Of Saying You'd Kill Not To Feel This Edward/Rosalie -


There are so many things she wants to say, needs to say, and can't say, because it would hurt more than just the two of them. She knows he's not perfect, she knows more than anyone how much he's lied, but still she isn't sure whether it would be better to say so now and let them hurt , or let them find out the hard way, and keep the pain for a while longer. She pretends so hard that leaving them to find out on their own is best for them. Best for everyone. By everyone, she means herself. By leaving it unsaid, she doesn't have to admit to things she never thought she'd dig up again.

This is what she hates about him. He brings out everything in her that's wrong, everything that she tries to keep away. He's the only one that makes her lie and cheat and hate. And, in a way, it's funny, because he hasn't realised that she's only a self-centred bitch when it comes to him, he makes her the very thing he despises about her. And sometimes it makes her laugh. But that's only so she doesn't cry.

She is used to being the honest one, the one who says it the way it is, and it's always been a good thing, until he twists it and makes it wrong. Substitutes her honesty for his own sugared sincerity, if sincerity is synonymous with lies, and makes her into the bad guy of the piece. Suddenly being right is oh so very wrong. And maybe, she thinks, it's because he's too weak to deal with her truth, because he feels the same way about her. Maybe she brings out the bad in him. Maybe they're just bad for each other.

Funny how the things that are bad for you are addictive.

At least for a while, until something drags you kicking and screaming back into normality and you slowly forget what made you feel that way, and steadily convulse with greater and greater disgust for the thing that got you there in the first place.

Funny how they like to think themselves original, when really they're so cliché it's almost sickening.

She doesn't say anything. She never will. She never has done before, why start now. She'll wait and she'll watch, and she'll stay behind to pick up the pieces. Not literally, she knows her face will e the last thing Bella wants to see if the whole truth, even part of the truth comes out. She was an intelligent girl. Give her a piece of the puzzle and she'd slowly find the rest. She intends to be far, far away if that happens.

But she'll end up being the one who has to piece everyone back together, if only because she's hardened to the shock and the pain, she's known it before, she knows what's coming. And she knows the way it will hurt. She wonders if she hates Tanya. Or whether she hates herself. Or whether she just wants to kill him for killing both of them such a long time ago.

She wonders what he says to her, to Bella. She never had the courage to ask Tanya. For all the honesty in her, she wasn't ready for that. Not at the time. But seventy years is a long time to harden your heart to the world, and the thought gnaws at her mind again, relentless and not half as painful as she would have thought. It just makes her hate him more.

_'...one and only...'_

_'...never again...'_

_'...never before...'_

_'...keep you safe...'_

_'...never ever leave...'_

_'...if anyone hurts you...'_

_They_ are hardly original, they don't mean as much as the others, the ones that, at the time, felt like they'd been made up on the spot because anything said before, ever, by anyone, could not encapsulate _them, _who they were, what they were together. _But even they are not worst. _It is the ones so cliché and yet so blindingly powerful that it make her almost forget why she ever tried to leave it behind that hurt her most. The soft reassurances written centuries before that he whispered in her ear when she cried – cried? perhaps not. But perhaps it was not so different after all. Had she ever even cried to begin with? - and mourned the girl she was and the woman she never would be.

_Beauty's ensign yet  
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,  
And death's pale flag is not advanced there _

The thing that stops her crying again is the memory that she believed him.

She runs away, the coward the says she isn't but knows she is. This too, is 'better this way.' Better for who? Better for her. Again. But it's true, because away from him she is right again, and all the bits of her personality that he plucks from their dark corners and brings out into the sunlight – sunlight? - that she never wanted them to see, can be pushed away and locked up again. And here there is Tanya.

Tanya knows why she's here. Knows that it has got too much to bear, and that if she stays a minute longer she shall say something, warn the little girl that reminds her so much of the way she was. The beautiful, intelligent, brilliant little girl who is, like the other one, so easily overcome by honeyed words and sliding touches.

So she runs away, leaves it all unsaid, and tells herself it's for their own good. She doesn't want to be the one that does to Bella what Tanya did to her, albeit inadvertently. She doesn't hate Tanya, so she has no reason to believe Bella would hate her. But she knows she would. She might hate her for not telling, but there's always hope with that tactic. She can deny all knowledge or explain about Tanya and the way she fell apart. If she says it, they will accuse her of doing it out of jealousy and spite and hatred, all the reasons that _didn't _come into it. They think they know her, but they never have. They never tried. She blames him for that as well.

She wonders if she should write it down, a diary of sorts. People leave there diaries open accidentally all the time, don't they? It would be the easiest way, she thinks, the quickest, every detail laid out before her face.

But would she read it? Perhaps not. Would she have done if it was seventy years ago and Tanya did the same thing, if Tanya had known he way she knew now? Perhaps. If she saw both her name and Edward's on the paper would natural curiosity overwhelm her, or would she pass it off as her spiteful hatred put into words and ignore it. She knew she came across that way sometimes. Him again. Somewhere down the line the bad guy had become the hero and knocked her out of place. By the time she understood what had happened there was only one spot left.

She knows twice is unforgivable. Once could have been a mistake, if she believed in mistakes of that sort, but twice is wrong on the verge of sadistic.

_My only love sprung from my only hate; too early unknown and known too late _

She has no idea where the thought came from, a leftover remnant from a leftover time. And yet, still so very relevant. She scrawls it across the top of a page, neglecting an explanation of the words, screws it up, flattens it out again and leaves it, carefully placed, in the top of waste-paper basket. What good it will do here, she doesn't know, but it makes her feel a little better, and a little worse.

She gets the phone-call later. Alice. A vaguely unwelcome voice. A chilling reminder of the family she left behind. And there's a chill in her sister's voice that makes her stop.

"Alice? Are you alright?"

"Me? Fine. Bella? Not so much."

She didn't expect it so quickly. And suddenly she's guilty because with the rush of compassion and empathy there's an undertow of relief. It's over, and it wasn't even her fault.

"She overheard Edward arguing with Kate," Alice continues, as though she knows that Rosalie knows what they're talking about. A shiver runs through her, a strange idea though it is to her – she is never cold, she is never so afraid.

"Katrina? What...?" And just when she thought it wasn't her fault...

"Give her some credit Rosalie, she's lived with Tanya almost a millenium. People must get easy to read after that long. Special abilities notwithstanding."

She reels with it, knowing that she was wrong. The butterfly effect, working in the strangest of ways. She's scared, and she's angry. Quite who with, she doesn't know yet. Apart from the way she's angry with herself.

"I thought she... she didn't do that unless..."

"Doesn't, but can. And well, morals are easily waived, eh Rosalie?"

They blame her. And so they should, she thinks. She blames herself. She blames Kate. She blames life in general. And she blames him more than anyone. Almost. She slams the phone down before she can hear any more.

Tanya finds her there, sat on the floor, head in her hands, sobbing when there aren't any tears. She stays there while Tanya drops to sit beside her, curling one arm round her waist and using the other to stroke her hair, all the time telling her it's gonna be okay.

It's always her that seems to break, even when she thinks so much that she won't. She thought she'd be picking up the pieces because the second time, second-hand, could never hurt so much, and it didn't, but still it does.

She wonders if it's truly the second time at all.


End file.
